Friday, November 30, 2012

Badiou’s philosophy rescues ontology form being either a
pseudo-problem (Wittgenstein) or a tragic story of finality and withdrawal
(Heidegger).To do this Badiou solves
the basic problem of the question what makes a thing the thing it is, which has
been handed down to us from the Greeks.The totality of ontology is basically contained in Aristotle’s
consideration of categories through the idea of divisibility and commonality or
species and genus.To work out what a
thing is you need to name its ontological specificity, this is a closed off
thing, and its ontological generality, this is a single example of all such
things.Thus the specificity of a thing
is its species, and its generality is the genus.This should allow us to differentiate one
thing from another in terms of what is unique to the thing (species) and what
it shares in common with others (genus).

Problems
always arise at the upper and lower limits of course.What, Aristotle asks, is the genus of the
genus or the maximal upper limit?Traditionally this is handed over to an inconceivable and thus humanly
inaccessible infinity that is essentially the province of God.At the same time when do you stop in terms of
specificity or what is the absolute lower limit of the species that cannot be
the genus of another species?Traditionally this is handed over to quasi-natural concepts of vitality,
substance or atomism.The history of
Western thought has been dominated by three insoluble paradoxes: the genus of
the genus, the species of the species and their inter-relation.Most systems have solved these by installing
God at the top, nature or life at the bottom, and a fudged compromise in the
middle. Kant is the best example of
this.

Badiou’s
intervention is amazingly simple.He
discovers that a key branch of modern mathematics, set theory, especially that
of Cantor, solved the problems of inaccessible infinity and infinite regress
through two axioms.Badiou defines the
greatest idea of our age as the laicisation of the infinite through Cantor’s
discovery that while we cannot count until infinity, infinite numbers are
numbers and you can calculate with them.Thus there is an upper limit or a genus which proceeds from no
species.

At the other end of the spectrum
Cantor also found a halting point for every species which is the void set.This is a set to which nothing belongs.That said he was also able to prove that the
void set belongs to every set, which means it also belongs to itself.Thus zero or the void is a calculable halting
point at the lower level beneath which are simply more voids.However many voids are in the void set, as
they are all equal to each other, the void set cannot be made any smaller.Badiou summarises this in his simple but
brilliant ontological axiom: being is not.

If we
summarise, Badiou is able to impose an infinite that is actual, a void which is
present as absent, and thus a means of counting something as one without making
it the One, or being forced to further divide it into two smaller ones.Solving the problem of infinity and regress,
Badiou revitalises ontology and the metaphysical project.

What
interests Badiou however is not the ontological consistency that this
establishes, he takes this as read in an axiomatic and intuitive fashion.Rather he sees that the consistency of states
is always based on a radical inconsistency at its upper and lower levels.When a state is established then ones are
counted twice.First, at the ontological
level a set counts as one in terms of the elements which belong to it.Second, at the level of our world the state
counts the count and defines a stability in the world by imposing a limit to
the count.The first count defines what
belongs to a state, the second differentiates what belongs from what is
included or sets and their subsets.

What Badiou realises is that the
first count must include at least one element that it cannot count, the void
set.This void is real because without
it the set cannot be counted without the problem of infinite regress, thus it is
inexistent or exists as something which cannot be counted.This means every count is founded on a
dependence on a void element and this void element is real so that in certain
circumstances it can present itself.In
terms of the second count Badiou notes the axiom of the power set which says
that the set of the total amount of subsets in a set is always larger than the
set itself and operates in effect as multiple of multiples of an actual
infinity.The state, aware of this
problem, imposes a second count and determines that only certain elements will
be counted, while the rest will be included in the set as subsets that do not
belong or are not counted.Again Badiou
notes that the state is also founded on the inclusion of a destabilising
element, in this case the potential infinity of elements or subsets that could
be counted but are not.

Badiou’s
task is simply to find a means by which the void can be made to link up to the
uncounted subsets and his theory of the event is precisely that.The event is a void that presents itself to a
situation as present but not included whose impact is assured by a fraternity
of militants in any situation who feel they are included but do not
belong.They become champions of the
event and in such a way their actions become operative truths in a new
situation.This is the totality of
Badiou’s system, how to stabilise the system using the axioms of the void set
and the power set, and then ironically how to destabilise the system, precisely
because of the same two axioms.

Monday, November 05, 2012

Potentiality
Contrary to the assertions of many, Agamben's is not a philosophy of potential or impotential but a critique of the Aristotelian category of potential when applied to the signatures of thought and actions.

Summary of Aristotelian Potentiality in The Metaphysics:
Potential is the capacity to do something as the basis for the principle of change of state.

If A changes to B how can we be sure that B was once A, how can we trace causality?

Not just the capacity for child say to grow and learn to speak.

You must have acquired a potential through skill.

To prove you have this potential you must first actualise it.

Megarans argued you can only prove a potential when it is in operation. Thus all potentiality is actuality. Aristotle argues against this sophistry.

He accepts that actuality precedes potentiality. One cannot think potentiality without actuality but you can think actuality without potentiality.

But if potential only existed when actualised, there would be no potential.

If however potential existed before actualisation, you could never be certain a person has the potential.

This led to the idea of im-potential. The capacity to not-do something.

Thus if you are a builder and not building but you can build and have done so, when you are not building you have the im-potential not to build.

Agambenian Impotential
Agamben notes that impotential has the following effects.

In terms of actuality, what is negated is not your potential but your im-potential. Thus actualisation retains the capacity for potentiality.

At the same time im-potential means that potentiality always will be actualised, it is fated to occur because it is not “I could do something” but “I can do something I am just not doing it now”.

For Agamben potentiality (the common) and actuality (the proper) are only made logically possible by both being mediated by impotential.

Impotential is the indifferent element that undermines the structure of capacity to do something, will, agency, desire, creation, non-creation, change and stability.

Agamben's is not a philosophy of the potential, as many have suggested. The logical impossibilities of the potential-actual pairing founds the signature of western thought on the capacity to do something (thought and act). Impotential is, therefore, the indifferent suspension of all 'thought' since Aristotle in terms of two of Agamben's three key areas of investigation: thought and act. These two are mediated by that which indifferentially suspends thought (common) and act (proper) namely language.

The supra-signature of Agamben's system is life as the composite operativity of thought and act through the indifferentiation of language. Language suspends the oppositon between common and proper, represented by potentiality, and then ultimately suspends itself.

The logical aporias of Aristotle's potential necessitate the category of impotential as the inoperativity not of potential or actual states but their assumed difference and the manner in which they effectively co-found each other. For while the actual ought to be the founder, after all it precedes potential, it is itself always the proper or particularity of the realisation of a generalised potential. The same logic can be applied to potential in reverse.

I repeat Agamben's is not a philosophy of potential or even impotential. His is a philosophy of indifferent suspension applied here to the very signature of the category of thought itself: Aristotelian potentiality.